In Another Surprise, RIM Says It Won’t Migrate PlayBook To BB10

Research In Motion Ltd.’s foray into the tablet market looks like it’s ending.

RIM’s PlayBook, an attempt at securing a foothold in the popular tablet category largely dominated by Apple Inc.’s iPad, won’t be upgraded to support its BlackBerry 10 operating system, the company’s CEO Thorsten Heins said during a conference call Friday morning.

“We were looking at solutions that could move the BlackBerry 10 experience to Playbook, but unfortunately, I’m not satisfied with the level of performance and user experience and I made the difficult decision to stop these efforts and focus on our core hardware portfolio,” said Mr. Heins.

That could effectively end the company’s brief and unprofitable entry into the tablet market, but it might also provide a little relief to investors and analysts who wondered what exactly RIM was doing in that segment in the first place. The tablet device was launched amid much fanfare, but fell flat after its initial operating system didn’t allow users to send emails, a vital service given BlackBerry’s strength in that part of the smartphone market.

BlackBerry moved about 100,000 PlayBook devices in its most recent quarter. That should dwindle as the company clears out its remaining inventory. RIM said it will still support the current PlayBook with the old OS, but it’s unlikely to attract much more interest if it’s not transitioning the device to the software it’s betting its future on.

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